


Adéu, Arnau

by voices_of_salt



Series: The Riera Cycle [7]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Backstory, F/M, Gen, Ghosts, Love in the Time of Cholera
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 19:53:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9458048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voices_of_salt/pseuds/voices_of_salt
Summary: Shipwrecked and enslaved, Arnau Riera finds himself in the midst of an outbreak. But, Riera to the core, he heads for the sea.





	

At first, it hadn’t been too bad.

The slavers hadn’t even robbed him. The touches of gold on nose and ear served as a guarantor of his authenticity, they said: the Lafanese were a desirable commodity in some corners. The truth of this was borne out on the auctioneer’s block. Arnau’s masters had paid well for him, and though they’d locked him in a cell in the basement and clapped a collar around his neck, it was nothing he couldn’t weather. He knew his family would come for him, as sure as the tides would turn. All he had to do was wait. That was before the disease came.

By the time the steward released him, Ashtown had become a nightmare. The air was thick with greasy smoke from mass graves and the abyssal sewer-stink of a cholera-ridden city. It was cholera, to be sure, but something else was at work in the city. As healing magics failed, panic spread even faster than the disease.

His new masters set the whole household to packing in preparation for a flight to the countryside that none of them lived to see. The last Arnau remembered, he and the other servants had been seizing food and clothing in a frenzy. They even gave him weapons, with the logic that he’d be willing to fight his way out of Ashtown with the rest of the household. Halfway into packing a crate with fresh fruit, he suddenly doubled over, tears running down his cheeks at the agonising ache in his gut. He’d crawled into a corner to be sick, but even after his stomach was empty, the racking pain continued. Arnau retched, over and over, until he was gasping for breath. At last, shivering and exhausted, he slumped to the floor and slipped into unconsciousness.

 

In his dream, he saw the shipwreck again. That last, awful moment as the storm drove the _Voraç_ onto the reef. At first it had not seemed so hopeless, and the boats rowed away in the comparative calm of the ship’s lee, trying to ride the high waves over the reef. Yet all the while, the ship shuddered and groaned as the waves plucked her apart beneath them.

Then, impossibly, the storm worsened. Monstrous waves crashed down onto the deck, so even the strongest had to hold on with both hands, and each wave submerged them longer than lungs could bear. The seas smashed the last of the launches and tore them from the davits, and men and women hurled themselves into the water, swimming towards those boats still near enough to reach. But by then the boats were crowded and wallowing beyond all hope of getting over the reef, and those aboard had to hack at the hands of their friends in the water as they tried to crawl aboard, lest they be swamped. The blood brought the sharks, and soon those in the water struck out, screaming, for the reefs, letting their bodies break against sharp coral rather than be devoured alive.

Everything had happened so fast, but in the dream those final moments stretched into years: the wind shrieking like the souls of the drowned, the deafening thunder of surf on the reef, the whipcord cracks as loose sails and rigging lashed sailors’ faces open, and the terrible, splintering crashes as the ship broke apart under their feet. Terrified, Arnau sought for Mercedes, screaming her name until he tasted blood. He tried to shade his eyes against rain and spray, but in the black, howling madness of the storm, he could barely breathe, let alone see.

The last he could recall, he’d been struggling for’rard when the stays holding the masts in place gave out. He’d heard someone shout his name, but as he turned a wave hit the ship like a battering ram. Arnau had just enough time to hear the snap and groan as the towering mainmast fell, and he felt a hand grab his own, then slip, and he was carried overboard, fighting against a chaos of tangled rope, splintered wood, and foam.

 

Arnau woke from the nightmare with the deafening noise of the storm ringing in his ears, but all around him was deathly still. Silence hung over the grand house like a pall. Bodies lay strewn among the half-packed bags and boxes, bloated and rat-gnawed. Nothing moved.

This was his chance, Arnau thought. With so many dead, no one could possibly stop him now. He would escape, make his way down to the harbour, find a little boat, and set sail for the cruising grounds. If he knew his sister, she would probably meet him halfway.

He touched her shawl for luck, trying not to think of the alternatives. Surely he would have known if she’d died in the storm. _Surely_.

Shivering, he grabbed a discarded cloak and took a last drink from the basin in the kitchen. Then Arnau faced the doors of the great house. He was young and strong, but the wooden bar over the door felt like iron, and even after he unbarred his way he stood, clinging to the doorframe and heaving in rasping breaths. At last, weak but resolute, he stepped out into the horror of the city.

_Get to the water. Get to the water._

He gagged as the mephitic scent assailed his senses: the nightmarish stench of streets turns to an open sewer, rotting bodies, and partially-seared flesh. A few people hurried by, cloths pressed over their mouths. Living corpses with sunken eyes and blue-tinged skin reached for him with withered hands from the filth-swamped gutters. He stepped over them, sickened and all the more desperate to escape.

At first Arnau made good progress, or so he thought. But soon he was stumbling, leaning against the walls of boarded-up houses for support. Dark spots swam before his eyes. As foul as the air was, he couldn’t seem to get enough to breathe. The longer he walked, the more he began to realise that, even if he reached the water, he wouldn’t have the strength to escape.

 _Very well,_ he thought doggedly, _at least I’ll lay my bones in the sea._

Teeth bared, he pushed on, and defiance carried him forward for a while. He did not know how far he was from the docks, but at times he imagined he could hear the sound of surf. Heartened, Arnau staggered down through charnel-house streets. But soon it became clear that the city was far larger than he’d imagined. The walk soon took on the quality of a nightmare. His shoulders hunched under the terrible weight of a cloak that still somehow seemed no warmer than gauze. He didn’t dare stop: if he stopped, he knew he might never have the strength to go on. 

At last, his body betrayed him.

Arnau woke to find himself huddled against a fountain in a broad plaza filled with the sweet music of splashing water. His head swam, and his breath rasped in his dry throat. All-consuming thirst seized him, and he knew he must drink or die. Summoning what strength he had, he forced himself up onto his hands and knees, then sprawled onto the edge of the pool. Lying shivering on his side on the cold stone, he dipped his hand in the water and raised it, trembling, to his mouth. The cool water seared his cracked lips and tongue, but he drank. Over and over, he made himself drink.

Then he saw the bodies. Bloated and blue-skinned, they bobbed together in the water beneath a marble triton flanked by insipidly smiling mermaids. Recoiling in horror, Arnau slid back off the lip of the pool, landing with his back against the stone. He tried to clamber onto his hands and knees to crawl away, but found his limbs would not obey.

Slumped against the cold, white marble, he let his head fall back. Smoke choked the air, but high above it all he could see white gulls wheeling away towards the sea.

 _I’m going to die here,_ he realised. _I’ll never reach the water. I’ll never see Mercedes again._

Arnau had hoped she would come to save him. Now, he found himself praying with all his heart and soul that Mercedes and all their kin would stay as far from this terrible place as possible. If no one ever came, they would be safe. He would die here, his spirit trapped in lonely torment on strange soil forever, but at least his family might be spared.

_Ancestors, keep her away. Keep them from this place. Don’t make me die alone only to have them die, too._

He watched the gulls, and felt tears sliding down his cheeks.

“Oh my soul, none of us die alone,” said a familiar voice.

Arnau blinked.

Mercedes was standing in front of him, looking as she had just before the storm: wrapped in a heavy coat, with his red scarf tied tight around her neck.

“Mercè?”

She nodded.

“You survived the wreck?” His voice was less than a whisper, but she seemed to hear him.

Another nod.

Mercedes looked fine, except – except she _couldn’t_ be real. Not a hair on her head stirred in the fitful breeze, and the shifting sunlight through smoke cast no shadows on her face.

“You’re not real. You’re not Mercedes.”

“I’m no more Mercedes than you’re Arnau Riera.” She smiled, and it was as if he saw his mother’s smile on Mercedes’ lips: compassionate, and infinitely tender. She looked sadder, then, and older - there were lines on his sister’s face that he’d never seen before. “The souls of the clan move in their own time. I am here, and also shipwrecked.”

“So…” He struggled, “Mercedes is alive?”

“Yes, she lives, but she’s also with us. It’s a mystery of blood and saltwater.” She looked away, one finger twisting her hair, as Mercedes always did when struggling to explain something. “It’s… complicated, but I’ll come find you later, so you can leave with me now.” She glanced back at him, and Arnau was surprised to see tears on her cheeks, and an expression of long sorrow, finally ended in eyes that had always been so like his own. Her voice broke as she said, “And I’ve been waiting to see you again for so long.”

Then she smiled, and that smile was Mercedes as he’d known her all the days of his life: the girl with scabbed knees, the teenager with wild hair, and the sailor he’d fought side-by-side with, the woman he'd loved. That unfamiliar older face was there, too, and a glimpse of white hair under a black veil. Then the vision passed, and she was his own Mercedes again.

“Come on, little brother: let’s go for a sail.”

She held out her hand, and Arnau heard the familiar sound of the sea and the creak of rigging.

Grinning, he took his sister’s hand.

 

* * *

 

 

The street is still. Nothing moves but the flies and plump rats feasting on the dead of the city. At the Piazza of the Triton, beyond the bodies in the pool, a tall young man lies dead, sprawled against the fountain. His clothes are stained and filthy, and an iron slave’s collar hangs about his neck. Disease has taken its toll, but he might have been handsome in life. Yet, alone amidst a city of horrors, his sightless eyes stare up at the sky with joy, and there is a true smile on his cracked lips.

 

* * *

 

“Fuck, I hate it when they do that,” says the smaller man. Double-checking to make sure his kerchief is tied close over his mouth, he bends and cuts a gold earring from the dead man’s ear. “Isn’t even stiff anymore, but he’s still smiling. Fuck me, but this place is creepy. At least he had gold on him. Valkur’s balls, look at this, Salvador: a slave with gold. Crazy fucking town.”

His partner comes over and looks at the body. He stiffens, but says nothing, dark eyes wide over his own kerchief.

“What?” the short man asks.

Slowly, Salvador bows to the corpse, murmuring something under his breath. He reaches forward and gently closes the sightless eyes, then slices the gold stud from the dead man’s nose.

“What the hell was that about?” His partner asks as they move on. “Did you know that guy?”

“You’re not from the Islands, are you Jordi?”

“Half Lafanese on dad’s side, or so mother said, but I’m pure Flotilla rat: born and bred.”

“Eh, you wouldn’t get it.” Salvador cocks his head back at the body. “Still, all I’ll say is: when it’s my turn to kick it, I hope they find me smiling like that.”

“Fuck you, mate. This place is fucking creepy enough without you going all weird and Lafanese on me.”

Salvador shakes his head, offering a prayer silent prayer to his ancestors. Together, he and his friend move on through the putrid streets. The rats return to their gorging, the flies swarm, and all is quiet.

In the offing, a small skiff hails a sleek, lateen-rigged ship. Slowly, the ship turns back, sailing away from the plague-ridden city. And, high above the smoke and fetor, two seagulls ride the strengthening easterly wind, banking and wheeling as they fly towards home.

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

  
  
 


End file.
